too much, just too much

It’s 6 in the evening. I’m in the dining room scattered with dismantled seats that my brother-in-law managed to salvage from the wreak that is our L-300. We still haven’t plugged-in the refrigerator in its assigned sockets for fear that the electrical wirings that got soaked in the flood would short circuit and explode. I arrived early to find much of our clothes hanging in the clothesline drying in the open air; the newly-bought washing machine (the old one perished with the great flood) whirring all day; and much of the house, still badly in need of cleaning. As Geloy accurately described it, Camantiles (our barrio) has turned into a swamp. True enough, i arrived early in the afternoon by tricycle, but had to walk the remaining two blocks to get to our house because the tricycle driver refused to go on anymore for fear of getting stuck in the mud. Good thing, ate had already warned me against wearing shoes and pants, so i arrived in style, wearing the shortest shorts i could ever find, and a pair of flip-flops to compliment my get-up. The flip-flops didn’t serve its purpose though, as i learned early on that more than a fashion accessory, it’s actually a hindrance—the road being slippery and all; so i walked barefoot, amidst the mud that looked like the chocolate used in the turtlepie we ate at Conti’s last week, and the swimming tadpoles slightly visible in the murky waters beneath my feet. It feels like i woke up suddenly to find myself an unwilling contestant in a magsasaka challenge, in one of GMA’s reality tv shows.

Suddenly, my eleven days of continuous workout, my recent trip to Makati Med to have my wrist checked for the tendon cyst that’s been bothering me for a year already, and the impromptu “show” i put up at the gym—doing a full yoga session last Wednesday, despite having already finished my workout earlier, just because a member did a few poses in which i felt “upstaged”—all their seeming immediacy (and bloggability) vanished at the site of this total devastation that befell our household. Sis said its gonna take us til Christmas to be totally out of this mess. I bet it’s gonna be a longer healing period for our neighbor who lost her husband to the great flood.

This is too much, just too much.